Steamy weather in store for the Twin Cities, ringing in meteorological summer

CATHY WURZER: This is the last day of May. Do you believe it? It's the 31st. It happens to be the end of meteorological spring. It certainly feels like summer already, doesn't it? It's been warm, kind of sticky, some thunder in the forecast. NPR Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard is here to give us all the details. Hey, Sven.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Hey. Yeah. Very fitting that we're really just kind of diving into summer-like feeling here. And actually, May was very much like that as well. Kind of a mixed picture here with our spring in Minnesota when you compare it to normal.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. I know. It was really kind of weird. It started out cool. And then it just got hot. And it was kind of strange. Where do we end up, by the way?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. So March was pretty much statewide a wet, cold, snowier than normal month. We might remember that. And then April was kind of a transition where it stayed very cold in Western Minnesota, where they kept some very deep snow pack across Northwestern Minnesota into North Dakota. And then further east, it was a bit of a mixed picture. Everyone might remember that we had that second week of April heat wave in Southern Minnesota. They didn't get that in Northeastern Minnesota. So it stayed cool there.

But that heat wave kind of balanced out our temperatures in Southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities. We ended up only about a degree below normal for the month of April, even though everyone will remember mostly the chilly weather. So when you look at March, April, May as a whole, we were about a degree and a half below normal for the Twin Cities. And that was pretty close for much of the state as well.

Western Minnesota, because it was so cold in March, did end up a few degrees below normal. But the northwestern part of the state really saw a dramatic shift from the Moorhead area 10 degrees below normal for the month of March. But May was 10 degrees above normal. So for some perspective, in the Twin Cities, we were 4 degrees above normal for the month of May. But relative to their normal, it was much warmer in the western part of the state.

And the precipitation pattern was really kind of similar. Very wet in March. And then we just slowly turned off the hose through April. And now May has been a very dry month statewide except for, of course, the south-central part of the state where they got that deluge of rain a few weeks ago around New Ulm. Those areas still running ahead of schedule.

CATHY WURZER: And there were some fairly decent rains yesterday in some portions of the region.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. That's going to be the case over the next several days. They're almost monsoonal thunderstorms. If you're familiar with the weather they get in late summer in Arizona, you get these pop-up thunderstorms. And if you get one, yeah, you can get quite a bit of rain, inch, inch and a half of rain. But if you get missed, which most do, you get almost nothing. And there was a swath in a critically dry part of the state too, about a half inch to an inch around Hibbing in Virginia overnight last night.

We had a lot of hail reports yesterday in Western-Northwestern Minnesota too, places like Richville, Fertile. 2-inch hail in Funkley, which is just northeast of Bemidji. And we still have one little rogue thunder shower going around Orinoco, Hammond, headed up towards Lake City. Otherwise, the rest of us are pretty hot and steamy right now.

CATHY WURZER: And I want to get back to the hot and steamy here in just a moment. Let's talk summer right now. Obviously, I'm a fan of summer. I'm very excited that it's--

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Me too.

CATHY WURZER: --on the doorstep here, right. Exactly. So what is the outlook? Are we going to fry this summer or what?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. So the official Climate Prediction Center outlook calls for equal odds of it being above or below normal for June, July, August, our meteorological summer months. And it's the same thing with the precipitation pattern. Now, I will throw in the caveat there that I disagree with that assessment because when you look at summers since the year 2000, much of them in Minnesota have been above normal just because of, really, a climate change fingerprint.

In fact, in the Twin Cities, 82% of our summers have been above normal since the year 2000. So if you just look at that alone, it's hard to see how we would pull off a cooler than normal summer. Usually to do that, it's got to be wet where you're blocking out the Sun. That's just the way it is because we still have a lot of variability in winter. So we can still have some cold winters. Winter gets a lot of attention, of course, from the climate change element. And it should be because it's our biggest change. But you still can have that back and forth all depending upon our overall pattern.

But when you get into summer, the Arctic is sunny all the time pretty much in the summer. There's just not a lot of cold air around. And that's just kind of an obvious fingerprint that our greenhouse effect is in place. And there just isn't a lot of places for that heat to go. So I do think it's probably going be at least hot to start. And that's what the majority of the models that look in the more medium to long range are looking at. Much of June for most of Minnesota looks warmer than normal and probably drier than normal.

How far north does the drought expand that we have in Nebraska and Kansas is the question. Will that start to creep into Southern Minnesota? It will all depend upon how many of these sort of stormy days we can get in the southern part of Minnesota.

CATHY WURZER: Well, I really hope we don't fall back into drought. It looks like we are going to get, as you say, a little steamy here. Sunshine and hot and steamy for some of us through the rest of the week.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. Wurzer weather, right?

CATHY WURZER: I know.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. We had our first 90 yesterday in the Twin Cities. Owatonna hit 90 degrees. So did Rush City. We're going to do that again today. So very warm. Of course, a lot of people probably noticed the sticky dew points. Those are sticking around through the weekend too in the 60s. Not quite as bad as what we know we can get. Not those 70s dew points. But it is going to stay sticky. And just these instability thunderstorms are going to pop up each day.

Now, it does look like this afternoon, most of that is going to be in Western and Northern Minnesota. So places like Benson, Little Falls, Park Rapids, Big Fork, some of those areas because we're watching a little disturbance come out of South Dakota. That's going to be the focus for thunderstorms. I think the Twin Cities stays dry. Can't rule out an isolated storm. But mostly Western-Northern Minnesota. But as we head into tomorrow, Friday, isolated pop-up thunderstorms late afternoon-evening really possible anywhere. But you get the sunshine and steamy conditions midday. And then just watch out to dodge some of those thunderstorms. And, again, they're going to be hit and miss. So we're not all getting a good soaking. Keep your garden hose on standby.

CATHY WURZER: Right. Say, before you go, did I see this incorrectly? You were talking about hot, humid weather. But is there a cool down, maybe a little cool down next week?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer, Cathy. The models have been back and forth. This upper level ridge that's been creating the heat and the dry weather we had over the holiday weekend is actually to be moving backwards. So it looks like we get into drier weather next week. But we may stay pretty warm. Some of the models keep us near 90. Some do cool it down briefly. So it's kind of anyone's guess. So roll the dice.

CATHY WURZER: All right. All right. Spoken like a true meteorologist.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: How's that for honesty?

CATHY WURZER: This is why I love you. You're honest. And I appreciate that. All right, Sven. Have a great day. Thank you.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: You too, Cathy. You're welcome.

CATHY WURZER: That's our meteorologist Sven Sundgaard.